In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

7. “You Know It When You See It”: The Rhetorical Embodiment of Race and Gender in Rhinelander v. Rhinelander In the fall of 1925, a scion of one of the oldest, wealthiest families of New York publicly declared that his bride of barely a month had defrauded him. She was hiding the fact that she was “colored,” explained his lawyers, and had he known this he never would have married her. His wife’s lawyers found this claim disingenuous. He had spent the last three years in and out of her family’s home. He had seen all her relatives. More important, he had seen her; how could he not have known she was black?1 “Race” was, and still is, a problematic category that confounds attempts to define it, creating “nothing short of confusion” (Higginbotham 253). Despite its apparent grounding in a biological referent, race has no obvious objective base from which we can easily derive criteria for slotting people into racial categories. To make matters more difficult, race only sometimes refers to biological lineage. It is also used frequently to describe a complex of social and economic relationships characterizing an entire culture. As Henry Louis Gates has noted, discussions of race are instantly problemetized by the ambiguous nature of the term. Despite the confusing manner in which “race” is used, there is an historic tendency for people to seek out the underlying biological referent in their discussions. This referent at least offers some constancy. One would think the biology would be clear enough to enable one to make simple decisions in an annulment case. Or would it? One’s first determination would be the race, according to the agreed-upon biological referents, of the bride accused of perpetrating fraud. The bride’s mother, however, was “obviously” white (and English at Race and Gender in Rhinelander v. Rhinelander 137 that). Later testimony elicited that her father was a “mulatto” and did not like being branded a “Negro” by the press. Thus, the young woman had little of the biological material that comprised her legal racial category, which kept the fraud question open. This particular debate, and the courtroom battle that ensued, forced onlookers of both races to confront a number of issues that underlaid the fabric of their social existence. Social behaviors based in tacitly agreed-upon racial categories, class distinctions, economic barriers, and sexual mores were threatened. Here, in microcosm, was the result of a process that was a national obsession in the 1920s—the transformation of white and black America into “brown” America. The discussion provides fertile ground for revealing how concepts of race and gender could come together as narrative elements rooted in white America’s vision of race—both their own and the “other.” Arguments created by white lawyers, aimed at a white male jury, and eventually filtered to the public by the press of both races created visions of womanhood, black, and white that came together in the body of a person who was all three simultaneously. This chapter views the historical mutability of race by examining how racial narratives met, modified, and were modified by the sex of the principals. Clearly the issues of mixed blood as well as crossing of the boundaries of “proper” womanhood and manhood created a rhetorical melting pot from which the lawyers on each side pulled arguments in favor of their clients. This was not a clear issue of black versus white or even, after a while, of husband versus wife. There were no clear sides to label as “other” and treat accordingly. As Kenneth Burke notes, when categories blur “so that you cannot know for certain just where one ends and the other begins, you have the characteristic invitation to rhetoric” (Rhetoric 25). In this trial, the rhetors were lawyers with clients to defend; they were also white males with a major stake in maintaining a hierarchy that placed themselves at the pinnacle. Neither side dared tamper with the collective norms for fear of being rejected as too threatening. Both sides peppered their arguments with references to race and gender that they hoped would serve as “bridging devices” between their clients and the jury. The defense used these devices to make “gender” the critical concept for decision making , while the accusers worked to keep “race” at the forefront. The relative success and failure of their choices reveals much about which concepts weighed more heavily with the white male audiences of the time. The verdict also offers some...

Share